This
is the hypocrisy to beat all hypocrisies.
As
we all know, Donald Trump is vehemently anti-immigration. In fact, it’s the
centerpiece of his campaign going all the way back to June 2015 when he rode an
escalator to a podium and delivered a speech officially throwing his hat into
the ring.
Since
then, the Republican nominee has accused immigrants of being criminals who
steal jobs from Americans.
Well,
now it looks like the same can be said of Trump’s own wife Melania, who came to
the United States from Slovenia.
According
to an investigation by Politico,
Melania may very well have committed visa fraud and other immigration laws. And
Trump’s campaign has apparently been lying about her immigration story.
In
January, Melania claimed that she often flew back to Slovenia to renew an H-1B
visa, a visa type that Donald Trump despises and has said he would end.
“It
never crossed my mind to stay here without papers,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “That
is just the person you are. You follow the rules. You follow the law. Every few
months you need to fly back to Europe and stamp your visa. After a few visas, I
applied for a green card and got it in 2001.”
But H-1B visas last three years and can be extended to up to six years, which means the First Lady wannabe did not have to fly back to Slovenia for renewal.
As
it turns out Melania is describing something people do when they aquire a B-1
Temporary Business Visitor or B-2 Tourist Visa, which means she is lying about
the circumstances of her immigration to this country.
Furthermore, it could
also mean she took a modelling job away from an American citizen because her
nude photo shoot occurred in the United States in 1995 and B-1 and B-2 visa
holders are not allowed to work here. So Melania may have broken the law.
Andrew
Greenfield, an attorney specializing in immigration law, made that pretty
clear.
“If you enter the United States with the intention of working without authorization and you present yourself to a border agent at an airport or a seaport or a manned border and request a visa, even if there is not a Q&A — knowing that you are coming to work — you are implicitly, if not explicitly, manifesting that you intend to comply with the parameters of the visa classification for which you sought entry and were granted entry.”
Another
immigration attorney told Politico that if Melania used a B-1 visa she would
have had to lie about the purpose of her entry into the country.
“She would not have been authorized to work in the U.S. while on a B-1 visa. In fact, if a customs agent encounters someone entering the U.S. on a B-1 visa and they know that the individual intends to work for a U.S. employer, the individual will usually be denied admission. In order to avoid being sent back to Slovenia, she may have had to lie about the purpose of her trip.”
In
short, Melania Trump could be guilty of committing visa fraud which is a crime
that would seriously jeopardize her green-card status and her United States
citizenship.
If
she were not married to the Republican nominee and were of Hispanic or Muslim
descent, Donald Trump would be calling for her to be deported and would be referring
to her as an illegal immigrant and a criminal.
It
sounds like Donald Trump, his wife, and the Republican Party have some serious
explaining to do.